Empty Genius
by darth-healer
Summary: Sakura is no good at strategy and Shikamaru is no good at romance. Together, maybe they can figure out both. Oneshot. ShikaSaku.


The first time Shikamaru played shogi with Sakura, he worried for just a brief moment that he might lose. Her strategy had been bold and reckless, and knowing what he knew about the foolhardy girl, he had just assumed that she was no good with strategy.

He hadn't really wanted to play with her anyway. She had come to him for help, which was surprising enough in itself. Sakura wasn't the type to usually ask for help. But it had surprised him even more to learn that Tsunade had recommended him to help her. Sakura needed to learn more about strategy if she wanted Tsunade to recommend her for jonin.

And she did want that, apparently. Very badly.

"Checkmate," he said, moving his piece from one square to another.

He watched Sakura's face shift with the understanding that she had just lost. The serenity that deep thought had given her was suddenly shattered, and her eyes blazed with a fierceness that Shikamaru wasn't thrilled to see there. Fierce girls were always trouble.

"Let's play again," she said coolly, beginning to move the shogi pieces back to their starting positions. Shikamaru could see her visible tension and the way determination bloomed in her eyes.

He groaned, in no mood to play with her again. She would lose and then be angry with him. She would demand another game, and then another, until she finally won, which Shikamaru presume would never happen, trapping him in an infinite loop of playing shogi with her.

"You're not thinking far enough ahead," he explained. "That's why you keep losing. If you want to win, you have to think ahead of me. Think about what I would do and then try to preempt me."

Sakura scoffed, fumbling with the pieces as she righted them. Shikamaru made no move to help her. He was in no hurry to beat her again.

"You think you're so smart," she said wryly. "The wise Shikamaru-sama, perfect strategist."

Shikamaru said nothing, though he couldn't help but narrow his eyes at her.

"Come on," she said once the pieces were all in their proper places. "Let's play."

/

It wasn't until a week later that Shikamaru saw her again. She had been with Ino, sitting at Ichiraku's with a bowl of hot ramen in front of her.

"Ino," he said as he entered the booth, drawing both of their attentions. "We have a mission. We have to go."

"Now?" Ino demanded. "But we just got our food."

"Orders are orders."

Sakura tugged on Shikamaru's arm, pulling him toward the vacant seat next to her. "Ease up, Shikamaru," she said. "Sit down and eat with us. Then you can go on your mission."

Shikamaru didn't put up a fight. It was easier not to, and their mission wasn't pressing. So he allowed himself to slump down in his seat and he ordered a bowl of ramen for himself.

"Yeah, Shikamaru, why do you always have to be so uptight all the time?" Ino asked, noisily slurping from her bowl.

He didn't have a response to that. Again, it was always easier to say nothing, so he just kept his mouth shut.

"It's because he has so much genius inside his head that he has no room left for anything like fun or happiness," Sakura said. Shikamaru glared at her vehemently while Ino collapsed into a fit of giggles.

That wasn't true at all, he thought. He knew how to have fun. What was more fun than taking naps or watching clouds roll by? He loved those things. They made him plenty happy.

But he didn't say as much to Sakura or Ino. He just ate his food in silence.

/

Shikamaru, Choji, and Ino were gone for three days for their mission. When they returned to Konoha, Shikamaru saw Sakura again, only this time she was crying. He tried to ignore her as they made their way to the Hokage tower to give Tsunade their mission report. She would only delay the report, and crying girls were always trouble.

Besides, he was tired. He deserved a nap.

But Ino, of course, stopped to see why her best friend was crying.

"Hey, Forehead," she said as they approached her. Shikamaru often wondered how the two of them remained friends in spite of their constant bickering and name-calling. "What's the matter with you?"

Sakura, who sat down in the dirt, propped against the side of a teahouse, looked up at them. She had a hot cup of tea in one hand, and her cheeks were ruddy and wet with shed tears. Her eyes were deep purple in the sockets, and Shikamaru could tell that her chakra was low.

"I lost a patient," she said with a hiccup.

Shikamaru considered this for a moment, appraising her disheveled form. Not a lot of things would spur Shikamaru to tears, but he supposed that would be one of them. He couldn't imagine the pressure of holding someone's life in his hands, and then losing it.

And for someone as compassionate as Sakura, it must have really hurt. He felt a pang of sympathy for her, an unexpected swell of emotion that he wasn't so used to feeling.

"Oh, you poor thing," Ino said, crouching down to wrap her arms around her friend. It was good that she knew the right things to say, because Shikamaru had no clue, and apparently neither did Choji.

The two of them waited, Shikamaru tapping his toe impatiently. His sympathy didn't quite outweigh his need for a nap. The sooner he got his mission report in, the better.

"Come on, Ino, we have to go."

Ino whipped her head around to glare at him, but at this point Shikamaru was unfazed by it. She opened her mouth to speak, but Sakura cut her off with a delicate hand on her arm.

"It's okay, Ino," Sakura said reassuringly. "I'll be fine. You can go."

Ino gave her a skeptical look, but at Shikamaru's urging, she stood up and joined her teammates. Shikamaru couldn't help but wonder if Sakura would rather have been alone.

He spared one last glance at her over his shoulder as they neared the Hokage tower. When he saw her with her face buried in her hands and her body wracked with sobs, he wished he hadn't.

/

He played shogi with her again just a few days later. She had knocked on his door and asked his father if he was home.

Shikamaru couldn't explain why, but it felt like an invasion of privacy. She shouldn't have come to his house out of the blue like that. What if he had been napping, or on a mission or something?

Unfortunately, he had only been daydreaming, staring at the sky from his perch on his bedroom windowsill. He could hardly tell her he was busy when she had seen him as she approached his house.

He was pleased, though, to see that she had not been crying recently. Her eyes were not puffy, but pleasantly glittering when they fixed onto his. Their dark circles were gone, replaced with smooth, pale skin. There was even an amused tilt to her lips.

"I've been practicing," she said. "I'm going to beat you today."

Shikamaru wasn't so certain, but he didn't say as much. Truth be told, he couldn't care less whether she beat him or not. He merely sat down at the table with her and allowed her to make the first move.

The game wasn't anything special. He had played more challenging games with Asuma and his father. If Sakura had gained a new strategy, she was holding back on him – likely waiting until the last minute to reveal it. This made Shikamaru keep a wary eye on her. She had been adamant that she would win.

She chewed her lip as she reached for a piece to move, her eyes roving the board carefully before she played her turn. Shikamaru watched with more focused attention than he might usually give her. He wanted to win – it was human nature. But he also kind of wanted her to win. He thought she probably needed this victory more than he did.

Quickly, she placed her piece in its new spot and folded her hands in her lap. Tipped off by the unusual speed with which she had taken her turn, Shikamaru watched her through narrowed eyes. It was then that he noticed that she had tugged on her red vest, pulling it down to reveal the expanse of her creamy chest. He wouldn't necessarily have called it cleavage, but he saw what she was trying to do.

And that strategy just wasn't going to work on him.

Ignoring her, he looked back to the shogi board, calculating the best move. If she was going to try to distract him, he would just not look at her.

It was easier said than done. In attempting to ignore her, he found himself even more pressed to look at her. He could hear her fidgeting in her seat. She made an impatient noise with the back of her throat, but he didn't look up at her. He kept his eyes on the board, tapping his finger against his chin as he contemplated his next move.

Sakura cleared her throat, but he still did not look up at her. He located the piece he wanted to move, and moved it carefully.

He didn't look up at her until he had completed his turn. It was then that he saw that she had leaned in toward her, her chest a scant centimeter away from the shogi board. It was her eyes, though, that caught his attention. He couldn't remember ever being intrigued by them before, but now he found himself captivated by their kaleidoscope of green hues. He swore that tufts of emerald and moss and mint breezed through her irises the way clouds might through the sky.

And she thought her breasts were the best distraction. Shikamaru didn't fancy himself a connoisseur of beauty, but there was something inexplicably pleasant about staring into Sakura's eyes. He imagined it was the kind of beauty that artists could only hope to capture on the page. How could they show with paint or pencil the way her eyes seemed to shimmer?

He still beat her, of course. It was with only the tiniest twinge of regret that he moved his pawn near her king. "Checkmate."

Sakura was disbelieving at first, her eyes darting over the shogi board and the positions of each piece. When understanding dawned on her, she returned her gaze to Shikamaru. It was far more heated now, enough to send an illicit shiver down his spine. He hoped she didn't notice.

"You should probably come up with a different strategy," he said dryly. "Seduction doesn't seem to be your strong suit."

He didn't want to admit that he delighted in the harsh expression that swept across her face. Usually he would find it troublesome, but it seemed to evoke new, ethereal heat in her eyes.

"My strategy is fine," she snapped. "You're just a weirdo. This would work on a normal man."

Shikamaru blinked, but tried to show no other outward indication of his surprise. He was a normal man – as normal as they come. Her strategy hadn't worked because he wasn't stupid enough to fall for it, not because he wasn't a normal man.

"You could try batting your eyelashes," he suggested. He would really have liked to see her do that.

Sakura scoffed with disgust as she shoved herself away from the table and got to her feet.

At least she didn't flip the board over on her way out.

/

On a particularly sunny afternoon, Shikamaru found himself reclined against a grassy hill by the river. The cool, rushing water created a pleasant lull for him to daydream to as he watched clouds roll by. The Hokage tower nearby cast plenty of shade to keep the sun out of his eyes.

It was a secret to no one that Shikamaru enjoyed moments like these, maybe a bit too much. That was why he was duly annoyed when across the river, splashing along the bank, he spotted Sakura.

She was dressed in a bathing suit, a tiny red bikini that Shikamaru couldn't help but notice. She skipped through the water, grinning as she splashed around like a little child.

"Hey, could you keep it down?" he yelled over to her. "I'm trying to take a nap here."

"You don't own the river, Shikamaru," she yelled back.

He ignored her and closed his eyes. She knew he wanted his peace and quiet. He muttered under his breath about troublesome girls, but his heart softened a bit when he cracked an eye open to watch her.

She was very clearly enjoying herself, taking a bit of time to de-stress. He watched her wade into the river and begin to swim around, gazing up at the same clouds he had been watching before. She looked far too content for him to bother, and he supposed that she deserved some contentedness. She had lost that patient, after all, and Tsunade had yet to grant her jonin status.

So instead of confronting her about encroaching in his space, he simply stood up to leave.

"Wait," she called after him, so he paused.

"You don't have to leave," she said when he turned back to face her. "I'll be quiet. I promise."

Shikamaru highly doubted that. He'd had the misfortune of spending a good length of time with Ino and Sakura after the three of them had been placed on a mission together, and he knew for a fact that Sakura was even louder than Ino sometimes.

Of course he found it hard to say no to her when she fluttered her lashes for him. He couldn't tell whether it was intentional, of if she was teasing him. It hardly made any sense at all, but Shikamaru sat back down in the grass all the same.

/

There was one moment in particular when Shikamaru realized that he was beginning to feel something different for Sakura.

It had been after a sparring session with Asuma. His sensei had caught him with a kunai, using a diversion to distract him. It had sliced through his leg, severing an artery and causing a fountain of blood to spurt up.

Shikamaru had been insistent that they could continue, but Asuma wasn't having it. He's lost too much blood already, Asuma had said. He needed to go to the hospital.

So that was how Shikamaru found himself in Sakura's care. He knew she was renowned for her medic skills, and he had no doubt that it was true. But seeing her in action was completely different.

It was with the utmost tenderness that she had disinfected the wound, even going so far as to make cooing sounds as he winced against the burn. He would have been irritated by that had it not been abundantly clear that Sakura didn't want him to feel any pain.

"I'm going to use chakra to quell the nerves in your leg," she said. "It might go numb for a few moments, but you won't feel any pain while I suture you up."

And just as she said, he felt no pain, only the strange sensation of the bizarre chakra needle she used to sew up his wound. He was impressed by the skill – he knew he didn't have nearly enough chakra control to create a needle out of it, and certainly not enough to be able to wield such a needle.

He looked up at her face, feeling a new impression of her forming in his head. She had always been just a shrill girl, a friend of Ino's, one of Sasuke's lame fangirls. But now he couldn't help but see her differently. She wasn't just a girl. No, she was a woman with skills and talent. She was a kunoichi.

"There you go, Shikamaru," she said, patting his leg. "All done."

She looked up at him, her face startling close to his. Their eyes connected, and it made Shikamaru's heart leap in his chest. He would have looked away from her, embarrassed by how close their faces were, but he couldn't. He felt trapped in her gaze, her winning smile.

"Thank you," he said, easing himself forward to step off her medical table and back onto solid ground.

Sakura backed up to accommodate him, but not far enough away that he couldn't feel the heat emanating from her body.

"Be careful not to rip it open," she said, "or you'll have to come back so I can stitch you up again."

Shikamaru didn't think he would mind that so much.

/

A month after she had fixed up his leg, Shikamaru realized that it had been quite some time since he had seen her. She hadn't come back to his house to play shogi since the last time, and he hadn't come across her at all in the time since then.

He didn't want to think that he missed her. That was just silly. But she had been so adamant about learning strategy and becoming jonin that he worried about whether or not she had actually achieved it.

So when he, Ino, and Choji were at their weekly barbeque dinner, he brought up.

"Hey, Ino, did Sakura ever make jonin?" he asked, trying to sound as casual as possible.

Ino smacked noisily on her food, trying to swallow quickly so that she could speak. "Tsunade-sama thinks she needs to be more well-rounded," Ino said, poking at her plate with chopsticks. "She thinks Sakura's already at jonin level, but she doesn't want to give her the title until she gets good at another skill."

"And she chose strategy?" Shikamaru asked. Why wouldn't she have chosen something better suited to her pre-existing talents like taijutsu? It wasn't that she was no good at strategy. It was just that strategy wasn't the kind of skill that was easy to hone. Did Sakura know she didn't need to work so hard?

"What's wrong with strategy?" Choji asked through a mouthful of pork.

"Nothing," Shikamaru said quickly.

He was too afraid to bring Sakura up again. He didn't want Ino to be suspicious.

/

Six weeks after she had healed his leg, Shikamaru knocked on Sakura's door with a shogi board tucked under his arm. If the stubborn girl was adamant that strategy was the skill she wanted to learn, then he would help her. He could respect that she was willing to learn such a brain intensive skill.

When the door flung open, it revealed a Sakura that Shikamaru had never seen before. She was dressed in sweatpants and a wrinkled t-shirt, her hair tossed haphazardly into a bun on top of her head. There was a fringed blanket wrapped around her, and she looked, well, puffy. There was no other word for it.

"Oh, Sakura, are you sick?" he asked.

She shook her head and opened the door wider for him to enter. "No," she said, giving him a smile that really mismatched her disheveled appearance. "I'm just taking a personal day."

He stepped inside her home, surveying the television currently playing some sort of romantic comedy, the take-out containers littered around the table. He also happened to notice the heating pad in her armchair and the open bottle of aspirin on her kitchen counter.

"A personal day, huh?" he asked, wary now that she was clearly on her period. He could even smell her blood now that he thought about it. He knew that girls on their period were always troublesome, but Sakura didn't seem so troublesome right now.

"Oh, you understand, don't you?" she asked. "Sometimes a person just needs to sit around and do nothing for a while to recharge."

Shikamaru really couldn't have agreed more.

"Well, I brought us a board," he said, lifting up the shogi board to show her. "I thought you might want to play. It's been a while."

A frown flitted across Sakura's face. Shikamaru barely managed to catch it before it was replaced with a smile.

"Sure," she said. "I could probably use the practice."

She took the board from him and cleared a space on her table for it. Shikamaru watched, glancing around her house. He couldn't remember ever being inside her house before.

Sakura offered him something to drink, and he accepted the glass of lemonade she had brought him. It was homemade, she said. She had made it herself. Shikamaru drank it as she made her first move.

They played silence. Shikamaru because he mostly wanted to observe Sakura, and Sakura mostly because she was trying to concentrate on winning. He could see the evolution of her game. Her turns took longer now, and he could see that she was trying to guess what moves he would make so she could preempt them.

He considered letting her win, but decided that would be unfair to her. She wanted to get better, not be pandered to.

So he won again.

"Ugh, why am I so bad at this?" she asked, clenching her teeth with frustration.

"It's not that you're bad," Shikamaru explained. "It's just that I'm really good."

"You might be onto something there," Sakura agreed. "I've beaten Jiraiya and Tsunade and Yamato and Neji and Kakashi," she said, ticking off each name on her fingers. "But why can't I beat you?"

Shikamaru shrugged, and while it might have looked apathetic, it was anything but. While he wouldn't say it aloud to her, he was impressed that she'd been able to beat so many people at shogi. Some of them were quite good.

"I suppose it doesn't matter anyway," she said with a heavy sigh. She propped her elbows up on the table and rested her chin on her hands. "I don't deserve to be a jonin. I mean I'm nowhere near Naruto and Sasuke's level, power wise. And you're obviously much, much smarter than I am. I'm going to be a genin forever."

This made Shikamaru furrow his brow with concern. "What are you talking about?" he asked. "Of course you deserve to be a jonin. You're the top medic in the world, aren't you?"

Sakura waved a dismissive hand. "Tsunade-sama said that if I properly beat you at shogi, then she'll let me be a jonin."

Shikamaru nearly choked on his surprise. What an insanely low bar for jonin.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked.

"Because I didn't want you to let me win."

"What makes you think I would do that?" he asked with narrowed eyes.

"Well, you just said I deserve to be a jonin, even though clearly I'm unable to complete the requirements," she argued.

He gave her a dry look. "That's a stupid requirement," he said.

To his surprise, Sakura glared at him. "It's not stupid," she snapped. "Tsunade-sama thinks it's a good idea, and I agree."

Shikamaru crossed his arms over his chest, feeling a little annoyed. "Let me help you, then," he said. "I'll teach you some new techniques and some of my favorite moves."

Sakura's face lit up at that suggestion, and Shikamaru thought briefly that whatever suffering he would endure to teach her all this would definitely be worth it.

/

She had beat him a week later. It had been fair and square. After playing shogi with her every night that week, teaching her his moves and strategies, she had finally managed to eke out a win, even if it was just barely.

Normally Shikamaru didn't like to lose, but it was hard to feel sour about it when it had clearly made Sakura so happy. So happy, in fact, that she had leapt across the table, knocking over the shogi pieces to wrap her arms around his neck and pull him into a tight embrace.

A bit awkwardly, he patted her back, unsure of how to respond to such a flagrant display of affection.

"Thank you so much for all your help," she said into his ear. "Will you come with me to tell Tsunade-sama? She'll never believe me."

Of course he couldn't say no to that.

/

Two days later, she had showed up at his door with her brand new jonin vest. She looked quite good in it, Shikamaru mused, even if it clashed with her pink hair. In her arms she carried a pink pastry box, which she extended to him while wearing the most charming grin.

"I wanted to thank you for all your help," she said.

Shikamaru took the box from her and invited her inside. "You didn't have to do that," he said. He would probably end up giving the sweets to Choji anyway. Still, he appreciated both the gesture and her company.

"I know," she said, tucking her hair behind her ears with sudden shyness. Shikamaru was curious to note the pink blush that tinged her cheeks and the way she twisted her toe against the hardwood floor. "But there is something else I want to give you."

"What?" he asked with bemusement.

Sakura took a step toward him, bracing her tiny hands against his arms. She stood up on her tiptoes and pressed a closed mouth kiss to the corner of his mouth. Stunned, Shikamaru could only stare at her, swallowing the heavy heartbeats that pounded in his chest.

He had never been kissed before, so he didn't think it was entirely fair for her to spring such a thing on him. How was he supposed to react? Was he supposed to kiss her back now?

"Thanks for being such a good friend," she said, her cheeks absolutely flaming. He found some comfort in her nervousness. It meant he wasn't alone in feeling it.

/

For days afterward, Shikamaru found his thoughts lingering on Sakura's kiss. It was all he could think about when he daydreamed, when he went on missions, and definitely when he was playing shogi – even with people other than Sakura.

He hadn't given much consideration to girls before. He had briefly mused that Temari was quite pretty, but other than that he'd felt no inclination to pursue someone.

Now, though, he couldn't stop thinking about what it would be like to take Sakura out on a proper date. Would she even want to go? Was he reading too much into that kiss? Perhaps she was really only grateful for his help with shogi and hadn't meant anything more by it.

Shikamaru hoped desperately that that wasn't the case.

He had dressed up in a nicer set of his civilian clothes – not too dressy, but presentable enough by shinobi standards. She hadn't been home when he'd gone to find her, so he tried the next best place – the hospital.

She had been with a patient, so he decided to wait outside her office for her. After about half an hour, she had finally come. Before she'd even made it all the way down the hallway, he could tell that she was exhausted. The dark circles were back under her eyes and her chakra was low once again.

"Shikamaru, what are you doing here?" she asked. She didn't sound annoyed, but she did sound tired, and it made him regret coming to bother her while she was at work.

"Oh, well, I just…" he trailed off, scratching the back of his head nervously.

"Are you feeling alright?" she asked, stepping toward him to press her glowing hands to his chest. He immediately felt the warmth of her chakra spreading through him, calming his nerves and quelling the smallest aches and pains in his body.

"I'm fine," he said, floored that even in her current state, even with the irritation she must have felt, she was compelled to make sure that he was okay. Her compassion far exceeded his own.

She peered up at him through her pink lashes, her brow furrowed slightly as she tried to make sense of his presence here. Shikamaru didn't know how she was going to do that when he wasn't sure he could do that himself.

Clarity grabbed hold of him, though, as he stared back at her. Her fingers were still pressed to his chest, though he could no longer feel her chakra. If she noticed the intimacy of their pose, she made no indication of it. Her eyes were only filled with concern.

His though, filled with something entirely different. He was a man, after all, and while he'd never been interested in women in the past, he couldn't help but feel interested right now with Sakura's warm body pressed so close to his, and her adorable eyes looking up at him with worry.

So he did something almost unthinkable. He bent down and kissed her. She went rigid, but she was so incredibly soft that he didn't want to stop just yet.

But he also felt incredibly sick with the thought that he'd crossed some invisible boundary, that he'd done something so, so wrong. How could a girl like Sakura actually want someone like him to kiss her?

He pulled away, trying to swallow the nausea that was clawing its way up his throat. He was almost too afraid to look at her, but where else could he possibly look?

Her eyes were comically wide and she reached up with trembling fingers to touch her lips.

"I'm sorry," he stammered, feeling heat bloom in his cheeks. "I don't know what I—"

His next words were swallowed as Sakura latched her trembling fingers into the fabric of his shirt and pulled him down into another kiss.

Stunned once again, Shikamaru stilled beneath her touch for exactly one second before he slid his fingers into her hair and held her face against his.

He now understood why men so easily fell for women like Sakura. There was nothing but pleasure and heat and friction and nerves in Sakura's kiss. He couldn't even properly describe the feeling – he only knew he wanted more of it.

Later that night, when he was burrowed deep under his blanket, waiting for sleep, he could think of nothing but Sakura's trembling hands and soft lips, hoping desperately that he would have another chance to kiss her soon.


End file.
